Kenyan doctors and nurses warned Thursday they will extend a strike crippling public hospitals to private clinics as well next week, unless the government offers them more in a pay dispute. Public hospitals have been deserted for four days, with patients left to fend for themselves, forced to return home or transfer to private clinics as healthcare workers embarked on a mass stayaway.
"It is very important for Kenyans to know that we don't hate going to work, we love our work but it has come to a situation where we need to tell the government that we are serious this time," nurse Eunice Ngare told AFP during a protest march. Unions are demanding a 300-percent pay rise for doctors and 25- to 40-percent pay rise for nurses that they say was agreed in a 2013 collective bargaining agreement, but has yet to be implemented.
The government on Wednesday offered a 50,000 shilling ($500, 442 euro) increase to the lowest paid doctors - which would have raised their salaries to 176,000 shillings - but unions rejected this outright and again walked out of talks. "We want to make it very clear that this strike shall only be called off by the implementation of the Collective Bargaining Agreement. The doctors in this country have been taken on a goose chase for so long," said Ouma Oluga of the Kenya Medical Practitioners, Pharmacists and Dentists Union.